The Mermaid and the Murders

by Rachel Graves

  “We sometimes show up in Greek myths, though. There was this poet named Homer—”

  “I know who Homer was. I’m in AP English.”

  “Wow.” That stopped him. “I haven’t gotten to AP yet. I didn’t know Homer was on the required lists.”

  “Just The Odyssey, but I read more than that.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to get as much education as I can before I have to leave.” That was the truth, and it was all I was going to say about it.

  “Leave? You going somewhere?”

  “Um, after I graduate from high school.” I quickly covered, but the look on his face told me he wasn’t buying it. Still he let it go.

  “This is my third time through. The first time I was the youngest to graduate, then I looked normal, now I feel like the oldest. I’ve been to eleven different schools. It’s never the same. Some schools, everyone is getting high or hooking up. In others, everyone is driven, focused on getting into college. But no one’s having any fun.”

  “And what’s your idea of fun, Mr. Vampire?”

  The word made him color, a little, his ears turning pink. I decided I’d use it again, even if it was wrong. He looked cute pink. “I’d say talking to you is the most fun I’ve had all day.”

  I blushed all the way to my toes.

  “And music. I’m a huge fan of live music.”

  “What type?”

  He looked too clean cut to go for metal or rock. “Classical.”

  “Of course.” I rolled my eyes.

  “It’s really good. Have you ever been to a symphony?”

  I strained to remember, if I had been. “Oh yeah, fourth grade. Peter and the Wolf.”

  He laughed and after a minute I joined him, even though I wasn’t sure it was so funny. “Let me take you to a concert.”

  “Okay. I guess. What do I wear?”

  “Something nice. A dress. You know, church clothes.”

  Something else I didn’t know and wasn’t about to tell him. I’d never been to a church, at least not one on land. Somehow, I didn’t think he meant I should wear my hair the way I did when we sang to Mother Ocean. “I’ll get Ashley to help me pick something out.”

  “You’re sure that’s a great idea?”

  “She hates Jen now. Also, you weren’t there to save her when she found that dead body, so I might be able to get away with it.”

  “Sounds like a pretty big risk.”

  “I think you’ll be worth it.” I smiled at him, because I thought he might be. If the salt golem stuff was a fantasy, it was a pretty elaborate one. He’d worked out a lot of details if it was just some way to impress me.

  “So when should I met your parents?”

  I slammed on the brakes without thinking, causing Mr. Whosley to freak out. He didn’t stop screaming until the bell rang. Thankfully, by then Sam had forgotten to ask about meeting my parents.

  Chapter Three

  After school, I got into Ashley’s car, not squished anymore. Jen hadn’t joined us since yesterday morning. Missing a ride home was no big deal. Missing the ride in this morning was huge. Ashley had quite deliberately not noticed. She told me to sit up front this morning and didn’t give a reason why. I expected to hear about Jen’s fall from grace through the school gossip network. Instead, the look on Ashley’s face told me I was going to hear now, on my way home, and it wasn’t going to be easy to listen to.

  “Where’s Heather?” I asked the car. Sitting in the front seat felt odd; did I turn and face Sarah in the back or look at Ashley in the front? I half twisted trying to see everyone. “Still off with her new guy?”

  Sarah nodded not willing to say anything. Ashley fumed for a second, then let go.

  “She’s still in bed with him, or in some restaurant, at some bar. Not that it really matters. The last time she disappeared it was some rap star, before that it was that real estate guy. She’s off having a great time. Jen, on the other hand, has suddenly decided she’s too good to sit in my car.”

  Sarah blinked twice, but didn’t say a word. I was on my own. “Did she say that?”

  “No. She texted me not to wait for her yesterday, then this morning she sent another text that I didn’t need to pick her up. No explanation. Nothing. See for yourself.” Alexis tossed her phone at me. I scrolled to the texts and found it. Jen’s note didn’t look inflammatory. It read, “don’t need a ride to school anymore. Thanks”

  “So she drove herself in?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I didn’t speak to her all day.” The glare that accompanied her words told me I shouldn’t speak to her either, that no one should.

  “I think you’re right, Ashley, for her to ditch us without an explanation like that. It’s so harsh, especially after what happened.” Sarah wasn’t getting the praise she wanted so she switched tactics. “I’ll bet she just couldn’t handle it the way you can.”

  That worked. Ashley perked up. “You’re probably right. Seeing that dead body is probably going to give her a nervous breakdown. The poor thing. She always was so fragile. You remember when she got all depressed in eighth grade.”

  In eighth grade, Jen’s grandma died. It was perfectly natural for her to be sad. That didn’t matter, though, reality never mattered more than what Ashley thought. By this time tomorrow, the whole school would be talking about how Jen was practically institutionalized for depression, for no reason. Then Ashley would let it slip that Jen broke down when she saw the body and then… And then I realized how sad it was that I could see it all. I knew exactly how Ashley planned to kill Jen’s social life. Suddenly, I wished I’d gotten another ride home. I should ask Sam how he got to school.

  Sarah responded to Ashley, egging her on and glorifying her all at once. The atmosphere in the car became thick with their plotting. They half-remembered, half-exaggerated stories about Jen for a good ten minutes. After that, they were down to straight out lies. I didn’t bother to keep up. At first Ashley let me slide, but then she called me on it.

  “What do you think, Danika? Was Jen always neurotic, or did she get better? I bet she was taking meds and she stopped them. I hear depressed people do that a lot.”

  “I’m more worried about who’ll take her place,” I admitted, because I was. Whoever took her place might see me as a threat. If they did I could get this treatment. Out of the blue, my place in the social structure didn’t look so secure. I wasn’t sure if I had a real friend among them. If I was a real friend to Jen, I’d stand up to these two.

  But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t risk it. Any threat of danger and Mom would drag me under the waves; nothing I wanted to learn would matter. If it wasn’t Mom, it might be one of them, pushing me into a pool or shoving me down. Another skinned knee, a quick dip in water and my secret was out. My life could be over or worse. I had to swallow my anger and tell Ashley what she wanted to hear. The whole problem made my heart ache. I wanted real friends, people I could tell my secrets too. Instead, I had Ashley and the tightrope walk that was high school. Did I really want this more than I wanted to be with the other mermaids?

  I kept turning the problem over in my head while Ashley and Sarah talked about all the girls in school they could add to our carpool. I needed something else to think about but nothing came to me, only scary ideas of things that could happen. Then Sam’s face popped into my mind. I forced myself to focus on him.

  In a way, Jen had done me a favor. Ashley wasn’t going to care about some new boy compared to this. She might be self-centered, but she wasn’t focused. Ashley knew the secret of her power was keeping things fresh; new fashion, new gossip, and a new guy to replace Sam. The risk I would take dating him had gone way down, but not to zero. I needed to find out if he was worth it. By the time Ashley dropped me off, I had a pretty good plan for how.

  I took a gallon plastic bag with me when I swam that night. I pushed all the air out of it, sealed it, and stuffed it in the top of my bikini. It wasn’t the most glamorous look, but it got the job done. A
few minutes later, I headed into the water by our beach. Normally I would wait, hanging out in the shallows enjoying the water in my gills; but if I was going to go through with this, I didn’t have time for that. I glanced toward my usual spot, my resting spot, where just twenty-four hours before I’d found a dead body. I ignored it and swam to the left.

  It wasn’t that I thought my spot would be forever tainted. I had an idea: something to see if Sam was lying with his salt golem story. He claimed to live on salt, and to prefer sea salt. Well, let’s see if he meant it.

  About four miles out, the ocean bottom dropped off like the end of the world. Suddenly, the water lost all its color. Where there had been orange and yellow coral with bright green splashes, now there was only blue water. Endless blue. It went on and on for miles, the blue only broken by darker blue that marked trenches.

  Mermaids lived in those trenches: my grandmother, my cousins, my aunts, and, when she wasn’t with me, my mother. Other mermaids lived their whole lives here, coming to the surface to mate, fishing nearby. We stuck to the pod instead of seeking out other ocean creatures or trying to establish ties with humans. We didn’t have homes, not like the houses on land. But there were caves, places where families—well, mothers and daughters, our families didn’t have fathers—stayed.

  I shook my head, wanting the water over my gills to give me a bit of perspective. Being raised around humans made me long for their normal instead of my own. But I had to remember that I would never fit that mold. I’d never be able to move away from the water. I might be able to fall in love, but sex meant killing and that was pretty far from normal.

  For a brief minute, I thought about going to see my grandmother. She loved me, even if she wasn’t a hugging-cuddling kind of grandma. Sometimes talking to her made the world make sense. Unfortunately, no matter how much time I gave her, she wanted more. She wanted me to live with the others, to be there with them. You shouldn’t get mad at someone for loving you so much they missed you all the time, but hanging out with Grandma always left me feeling angry and caught. She wanted to give me all the freedom in the world, as long I stayed right next to her. Just like Mom wanted to give me all the freedom in the world, as long as I used it to do things exactly the way she had done. Neither choice worked for me.

  I dipped down into the first trench I saw. A shark swam by, its eyes black against its pale gray skin. In theory, mermaids could eat sharks. Our teeth extended into sharp edges when we needed them. Hard enough to break through lobster shells, those teeth were strong enough to take on a great white. But I still didn’t like them. Sharks made me too nervous to find out if the theory was true.

  I held still, sinking like a stone in the dark water. Above me, it might be day or night. There was no way to know, only blue water, the shark, and me. Not a fish to be seen. I waited, tense, all the while with thoughts of Ashley going through my mind. The shark and Ashley seemed the same to me, predatory and indifferent to how I really felt.

  Finally, the shark disappeared from sight. Only then did I take out the plastic bag. Trapped air moved like liquid mercury, bright silver, and thick. I pushed it around the bag, trying to get the air out before I succeeded in filling it with water from the trench.

  If Sam was lying to me, he’d never guess where this salt came from. If he was trying to play a joke with lies about salt golems and sea salt, he’d never taste a difference. If he did, if he somehow guessed that this salt came from the deepest spot off our coast, well…then we’d have some much bigger things to talk about.

  I sent Jen a text when I got out of the water, I didn’t think it through, not really. I just asked how she was getting to school. She wrote me back right away that she was using her older sister’s car. An unspoken invitation hung in the air. After some deep introspection, I decided to pretend that I hadn’t gotten the text yet. The next morning, I wasn’t brave enough to cross Ashley so I wrote back “that’s cool” and took my usual way in. Heather was still off with some guy.

  “What’s the word from Heather?” I asked as I got into the car.

  “I got pics from her last night. The guy set her up with a spa day. She did her toes in pink.” Sarah blew off my concern. Sure, Heather had done the disappearing-for-a-few-days thing before, but usually that happened when her mom took a work trip or her dad ditched her. Three days this close to the beginning of school was new. “She thinks we should invite Alexis to drive in with us.”

  “Alexis has her own car,” Ashley pointed out.

  “It’d be better for the environment.” Sarah barely whispered the words, and I knew it had been her idea, not Heather’s.

  “But not for her relationship with Dante.” I smiled as caustically as Ashley could, and my quip made them both laugh. I was glad too, the last thing I needed was the very nosy and very domineering Alexis in the car, egging Ashley on. Then again… I toyed with my cell phone, maybe it was time to not worry about it and ride in with Jen.

  Or Sam. I made it to driver’s ed just a little bit late, thanks to a longer than usual discussion with my guidance counselor. He wanted to know if Mom had taken me to see any colleges. I almost laughed out loud at the idea. Mom was on me every time she saw me to give up on school and join her in the ocean. I’d be lucky to get a year in at Playa Linda Community College, let alone go to University of Miami. Schools any farther away than that were totally out of the question.

  With that on my mind, I headed out to the parking lot, only to find it empty. I detoured and went into the classroom.

  “I assume you have a note, Ms. DelMar.” Mr. Whosley’s voice sounded like some R&B singer, all deep and loving, except that the look he gave me was far from it. I fished around in my bag to give him the slip from the guidance office, then grabbed a seat next to Sam. I wanted to say hi to him, but Whosley was lecturing.

  “We’re going to start driver’s tests today. We don’t usually do them this soon, but I realize that several of you were driving all summer. If you pass your test, you can switch out of this class. We’ll be going in reverse order, because I understand how unfair it is to people at the end of the alphabet to always go last.” The room commented in groans and mock cheers. “Tests take fifteen to twenty minutes, unless you fail. In that case, we’ll be done in five. That means four tests per class. Any questions about that?”

  No one cared enough to raise their hand.

  “While I’m testing, the rest of you will be practicing. Let’s get out there.”

  We all filed out of the room, with Sam waiting to walk beside me. “So I’m Aviles, and you’re DelMar.”

  “Yep. We’ve got plenty of time to practice.”

  “You’ve got plenty of time to practice,” he corrected. “I’m just here killing time, remember? Already licensed.”

  “Guess that means you’re going to leave me soon.” I tried not to sound disappointed, but I was. I looked forward to our classes together.

  “I wouldn’t leave.” He slowed down when he said it, like it was important. “Talking to you is better than any class I could take.”

  I stopped and looked at him. The black asphalt under our feet radiated heat. Everyone talked around us, slamming car doors, and opening them. It was the most unromantic moment ever, but what he’d said changed that. I looked at him standing in front of me, the cheesy yellow paint of the driver’s ed car behind him. I opened my mouth to reply, but what could I say to that? When he opened the car door for me to get in I said the most natural thing in the world: “Thank you.”

  He nodded at me and walked around to the passenger side.

  “I got you something.” I tossed the plastic bag onto the seat of the car before he sat down.

  “Yeah? What’s this?”

  “Taste it and find out.”

  I watched him hold the plastic up to the sun. Then, with a curious look at me, he opened the bag and sniffed. He must have liked what he smelled, because he took a pinch of the salt between his fingers and crumbled it. A second later, he popped it in his
mouth. A wide grin spread over his face.

  “This is really good. Where’d you get it?”

  “I made it. It tastes all right?”

  “It tastes amazing, like deep sea salt from about fifty years ago.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. It’s clean, pure.” He stopped trying to explain and started dipping his fingers into the bag and then licking them. There wasn’t much there, but he seemed determined to get every flake. “The more condos they build on the coast, the more pollution and people… You don’t get salt like this anymore, not without a bunch of money and hassle.”

  He gave up on looking civilized and tipped the open bag into his mouth as if it was a bag of chips and he wanted the last crumb. The last little bits of flaky white salt went into his mouth. My throat dried up just watching.

  “Don’t you want some water or something?”

  “No way. Don’t want to dilute the flavor.”

  I laughed, and started the car. “You must be some sort of weirdo.”

  “Salt golem, told you.” He crumpled the bag trying to get more. “How’d you make it?”

  “Microwaved sea water.”

  “Brilliant idea. I never thought of it.”

  I glanced at him with my best “are you crazy” face.

  “I fill a bowl and put it in the sun. When the water evaporates, you get salt on the inside.” He crumbled the bag with a look of longing. “But that salt doesn’t taste anything like this. What’d you do?”

  “I got salt water from way down deep.” And now I tried not to smile too much, to let on how deep I’d been or how I’d gotten it.

  “What were you, scuba diving or something?”

  “Something like that. Anyway, thanks for helping me parallel park yesterday.”

  “You’re welcome. What else can I help with? Because that tasted great.”

  Looking at his eager expression all I could do was laugh.

  Three of our classmates emerged from class with the little pink slips that meant they’d be driving soon. One test had ended in tears and recrimination. The screaming match between the student and the instructor went on even as the bell rang, ending the school day.